Child poverty here highest in OECD

"Most recent trends show widening gap between poor and rich in high-inequality countries, such as Israel and US," says organization.

poverty homeless dirty 311.
(photo credit:Marc Israel Sellem)

Israel has the highest rate of child poverty among the 35 member countries of
the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, with more than a
quarter of children living in poor households, a report issued by the
Paris-based organization has revealed.

According to the report, titled
“Doing Better for Families,” 26.6 percent of Israeli children, a much higher
rate than in Denmark, which has the best record at 3.7%. The OECD average is
12.7%.

The report also notes that while countries with high levels of
female employment tend to have low child poverty rates, Israel, Portugal and the
US are the exceptions to this rule.

“This [problem] could be addressed by
developing and/or extending existing inwork benefits drawing on the extensive
cross-country experience to design them in a costeffective manner,” such as the
earned-income tax credit in the United States, and childcare supports for
working families,” the OECD recommends in the report. “Recent experience in the
United Kingdom shows that a combination of measures setting a relatively low
wage floor, targeted working family cash benefits (with subsidies for
sole-parent families) and an increase in childcare places and subsidies can
help.”

The report was released late last week, ahead of this week’s
meeting in Paris of representatives from social welfare ministries in the 35
countries, to discuss the social challenges facing their own
citizens.

Nahum Itzkovitz, directorgeneral of the Welfare and Social
Services Ministry, attended the meetings, which also looked at the social impact
of the global economic crisis and the various social policies implemented to
support recovery.

In addition, the conference examined ways to enhance
the well-being of children, promote gender equality in employment, and
innovative approaches to improve service delivery for vulnerable families, the
OECD said.

In a statement from the organization on Tuesday, it said that
those at the conference had taken note of the ever-increasing inequalities
between rich and poor, making the “average income of the richest 10 percent of
the population about nine times that of the poorest 10% in OECD
countries.

“The most recent trends show a widening gap between poor and
rich in some of the already high-inequality countries, such as Israel and the
United States,” read the statement, adding, that countries such as Denmark,
Germany and Sweden, which traditionally had low inequality, are no longer spared
from the rising inequality trend.

Reforming tax and benefit policies was
one of the most direct and powerful instruments to address this imbalance, the
OECD said.

It said that countries must “facilitate and encourage access
to employment for underrepresented groups.”

“This requires not only new
jobs, but jobs that enable people to avoid and escape poverty,” the report’s
authors wrote.

“Recent trends towards higher rates of in-work poverty
indicate that job quality has become a concern for a growing number of workers.
Policy reforms that tackle inequalities in the labor market, such as those
between standard and non-standard forms of employment, are needed to reduce
income inequality.”